Mom Whose Teenage Son With Severe Allergies Relies on Formula Voices Frustration at Lawmakers: ‘Is Anyone in Congress Going Without Eating?’

CNN host Jake Tapper highlighted the toll the current baby formula shortage across the U.S. is taking on families on Friday by inviting on mother Claire Rowan, one of many parents dealing with the costs of the current crisis.

Rowan’s son, Will, relies on baby formula for his diet due to fatal food allergies. The Virginia mother has been sounding the alarm on the baby formula shortage for months now. Talking to Tapper, Rowan said it’s been “challenging” just feeding her son, and she has had to rely on the help of other parents connecting on social media to move baby formula to those who need it most. Now, however, supplies are running dangerously low.

“We have been very, very grateful for the support of our community and our families, but it is desperate times, most certainly. And hearing about those other families in similar circumstances to ours, it’s nerve-racking to not know every day when you’re going to run out, if there’s going to be an option to feed your child the next day,” Rowan said.

Asked by Tapper whether emergency formula being flown in from Switzerland under the order of President Joe Biden will help her situation, Rowan did not sound terribly optimistic, saying using new kinds of formula can be a trial and error process.

“It could. And I think that perhaps all parents who have medically fragile children are in the same circumstance, which until you try something new and are approved by your doctor to try something new, you don’t know if it’s going to work,” she said.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said this week that families would see relief in coming days, but a return to normal for baby formula supplies will take weeks. Tapper asked if she has seen the relief administration officials have been promising, to which Rowan replied, “no.”

Her answer highlighted the fact that this issue stems all the way back to February, when an Abbott Laboratories plant was shut down in Michigan after the FDA launched an investigation into formula tainted with bacteria and the death of two babies.

Rowan refused to blame any one person or official for the baby formula shortage later in the interview, but did emphasize the magnitude of the situation by asking, “Is anybody in congress not eating for 90 days?”

“The number of parents, the people who on the ground are sharing resources and helping each other, has been the only way that we have gotten through this,” she said. “This has not been a help we have really received from anybody in an industry or the government. It has truly been just the work of families helping each other, so to me, four days sounds great, but who wants to go four days without eating? Is anybody in Congress not eating for 90 days because that’s what we’re asking of some of these children potentially if we don’t come up with a better answer.”

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